January 17th this year here in the Midwest I

[moniss]

10. Some do pass on the surcharge but you never know if they

are telling the truth about how much they really got. For some they don't do a fuel surcharge and so you either keep hauling for less net profit or stay home and make nothing. Lots of truckers fall behind on their truck payments when these circumstances happen. Greedy companies count on people not wanting to get behind or get the equipment repossessed and so they keep them running cheap freight at almost break even rates.

Many of those greedy companies and freight brokers make the shippers pay higher but never pass more to the trucker. Truckers mostly never see the actual freight charge amount the shipper paid despite it being in the law. Most freight contracts contain a waiver provision of your right to see the records. They've got the freight and if you want to waive your rights you can haul or you can sit at home and not haul. Most really small truckers don't have a sales force to go to the shippers directly and establish contracts etc. so they depend on the freight broker system. There's a few honest ones but only a few out of the 10's of thousands. So basically for small truckers it's "take it or leave it" and if you walk away again and again the end of the month comes and you don't have the payment for the finance company.

If independent truckers could ever get together and take organized, targeted refusals to haul they could have some impact but it doesn't happen these days.